Lauren Mahieu

Tech Tuesday: Cute pictures with Cute PDF

December 20, 2011 By Lauren Mahieu Leave a Comment

PDFs are great for compiling documents

I love PDFs. They are great for compiling photos of documents. Take, for example, the photographs of the pension file for Thomas H. Stanwood who served in the Civil War. The original documents were photographed by my cousin who lives in Washington, D.C., and was kind enough to visit the National Archives and take the digital images for me.

After reading (and re-reading) the documents, I like to draft a summary of my findings and copy the images into a Word document. (You can see the completed document for Thomas’ pension files here.) However, this process is rather tedious. What I find most time consuming is sizing the documents to fit into Word. The process can be SLOOOOOOOOW when large images consume the computer’s memory and decrease it’s speed.

Sometimes I just want a “quick fix.” I may have old photographs or images of documents that I want to convert into a PDF format. Cute PDF comes to my rescue.

Cute PDF is free. It allows you to “print” to PDF.

To make a PDF using Cute PDF:

1) Download and install the program here.

2) Select an image (or several images that you wish to include in your PDF) and right click and select “Print.”

You will see the following screen:

Cute PDF Screen

3) Select Cute PDF Writer in the upper left hand corner, and click whichever format you prefer for your document on the right. Click “print” in the bottom right hand corner.

4) Type the name for your file and click “Save”.

Save Your PDF

5) Open your PDF!

Photos saved into a PDF document

Filed Under: Tech Tuesday, Technology

Family Planning and the 19th Century Family Tree

December 17, 2011 By Lauren Mahieu 2 Comments

Susan (Stanwood) Clark and daughter Beatrice, 1906 - Floodwood, Minnesota

My great grandmother, Susan (Stanwood) Clark is shown above, holding my grandmother’s sister, Beatrice. My grandmother, Goldie (Simpson) Edwards, and Auntie Bea were the only surviving children born to Grandma Susie, who was herself one of eight children, seven of which lived to adulthood. Her father, Albert Stanwood, however, was one of only four children. Albert’s father, David, was from a family of six, born to Benjamin and Betsy (Wasgatt) Stanwood. Surprisingly, I’ve stumbled on a fair number of 19th century families in my genealogy (primarily in the Wasgatt lines) where only one or two children were born to the couple, while they were married many years. While not uncommon during current times, it certainly was not the norm in days past. It made me stop and ponder the reasons for these smaller family sizes. Infertility? Possibly. Choice? Maybe. But how? The Comstock law of 1873 declared birth control both obscene as well as illegal. So, what methods of birth control did our ancestors have available to them?

According to the CDC’s MMR publication Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999: Family Planning, discussing birth control, counseling women about family planning or distributing contraception was illegal under state and federal laws. ”In 1912, the modern birth-control movement began. Margaret Sanger, a public health nurse concerned about the adverse health effects of frequent childbirth, miscarriages, and abortion, initiated efforts to circulate information about and provide access to contraception. In 1916, Sanger challenged the laws that suppressed the distribution of birth control information by opening in Brooklyn, New York, the first family planning clinic. The police closed her clinic, but the court challenges that followed established a legal precedent that allowed physicians to provide advice on contraception for health reasons. During the 1920s and 1930s, Sanger continued to promote family planning by opening more clinics and challenging legal restrictions. As a result, physicians gained the right to counsel patients and to prescribe contraceptive methods. By the 1930s, a few state health departments (e.g., North Carolina) and public hospitals had begun to provide family planning services.”

Despite this, we learn from history that contraception, in one form or another, has been used for centuries. Planned Parenthood provides A History of Birth Control Methods, and describes ways our ancestors may have attempted to limit their family sizes. In China, women drank lead and mercury, which we now know will cause sterility, but unfortunately, may also result in death. Of course, there were other ineffective methods tried. From the Planned Parenthood 2006 Report: ”During the Middle Ages in Europe, magicians advised women to wear the testicles of a weasel on their thighs or hang its amputated foot from around their necks (Lieberman, 1973). Other amulets of the time were wreaths of herbs, desiccated cat livers or shards of bones from cats (but only the pure black ones), flax lint tied in a cloth and soaked in menstrual blood, or the anus of a hare. It was also believed that a woman could avoid pregnancy by walking three times around the spot where a pregnant wolf had urinated. In more recent New Brunswick, Canada, women drank a potion of dried beaver testicles brewed in a strong alcohol solution.”

While many religions frowned upon family planning (birth control viewed as something that immoral women or prostitutes would use, not those who were married), husbands and wives continued to look for ways to decrease the sizes of their families. A good example is extended and complete breastfeeding, which has been used around the world to increase the time between the birth of children. While many found this to be very effective, it was not popular among the wealthy, who often utilized wet nurses. Abstinence was another method of birth control, which was promoted in the 1870s for married women attempting to limit family sizes. Planned Parenthood attributes a rise in sexually transmitted diseases to this movement, as men began to turn to prostitutes instead of their wives.

Barrier methods were also used. Surprising to many, the condom is one of the oldest forms of contraception dating back to Egypt about 1,000 BC. Originally created from animal gut in an effort to protect from syphylis, it wasn’t until the 1700s that the contraceptive properties of the condom were recognized. By the 1840s, rubber condoms were available, and in the 1930s latex condoms became popular.

While birth control methods have certainly evolved through the years, and the 21st century woman has many options available to her today, it saddens me to think how many years it took for birth control to be accepted. While watching ABC World News last night, I was immediately reminded how much we take for granted. The segment included a Middle Eastern women with her newborn infant, who had the opportunity to talk via Skype to an American mom. She asked, “Are you also afraid of dying in child birth?” If such fears continue to plague the 21st century Middle East mothers-to-be, imagine the anxiety experienced by our American ancestors. According to the CDC, in 1800 in the average mother bore seven children. By 1900, the family size had decreased to 3.5 children, and six to nine of every 1000 women died in childbirth. Some statistics report that the 19th century death rate was as high as 10% for those giving birth.

I am incredibly grateful for modern medicine and birth control, and even more in awe of my many female ancestors who married and had families without the advantages available to 21st century women today.

For additional reading, here are some other really interesting web sites discussing the history of family planning:

Filed Under: Medical, Stanwood, Wasgatt

Wordless Wednesday: Salisbury Cove Cemetery, Bar Harbor, Maine

December 7, 2011 By Lauren Mahieu 1 Comment

Salisbury Cove Cemetery, Bar Harbor, Maine

My mother took this photo on a trip to Maine in 2004. I love this beautiful, peaceful cemetery, but I love the photo even more since Mom was the eye behind the lens. Mom died just two years later, making each photo all the more special.

Filed Under: Wordless Wednesday

Tech Tuesday: Money and the Great Ancestry.com Debate

December 6, 2011 By Lauren Mahieu 3 Comments

Ancestry.com - making my research easier

The year was 1994, and I remember the day like it was yesterday. That sound…that beautiful sound of a dial-up modem, connecting to the internet. My husband was by my side, showing me what the “world wide web” was like. I was mesmerized and astounded. I don’t recall what I said, but I’m sure “WOW!” was in there somewhere. Not that there was a ton of genealogy sites online in 1994, but my immediate thought was how this “www” thing was going to revolutionize genealogy.

Well, here we are, more than a decade (almost two!) later. My dial-up modem has been replaced with wireless internet service and WiFi in my home. The internet has grown, and we have a lot of free genealogical stuff available to us online. Find-a-Grave and FamilySearch are a couple of my oft-visited sites and bookmarked for easy use. I have subscriptions to several pay sites, but by far Ancestry.com is the one I simply can’t live without.

Therefore, it came as quite a shock and a surprise to hear a genealogist recently state he had canceled his membership to Ancestry.com due to the price.

Wow.

Hmm.

Really?

I recognize that times are hard and some people may not be able to afford Ancestry.com. That is certainly understandable, and fortunately Ancestry.com is available for free to users in many libraries and Family History Centers, so even those who aren’t able to have a personal subscription may still take advantage of their many great databases.

However, the person relating this decision was not financially strapped. This person simply felt that Ancestry.com’s prices were out of line, and chose to cancel the subscription to “make a point.” Unfortunately, he’s not the first one I’ve heard with the same beef.

Hmmm.

Well….

It never ceases to amaze me how some people expect to get something for nothing, or at least something for next to nothing. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I don’t have a problem paying for services I use, and allowing the company who provides me those services to pay their employees who process and index the records, pay for the technology that publishes those records so I can download them on my home PC, and even make a couple of bucks.

I consider my Ancestry.com membership to be quite a bargain. While FamilySearch.org is spectacular (and FREE- hooray!), it is only one site. Most people will concur that Ancestry.com is by far the leader of the large, subscription-based family history research sites. The number of databases, constantly growing, is astounding. The types of records I’ve been able to download is incredible. I’m particularly grateful for Ancestry.com’s Maine databases, providing a strong framework for researching my Maine roots with birth, marriage and death records. FamilySearch.org complements my research with excellent Massachusetts and other records.

Could I obtain those records by other means? Certainly. With one little caveat – I have to know WHERE to look in order to find those documents. Oh yes – I would also have to invest my time in scrolling through those rolls of microfilm, and then print, scan or photograph any items I found that I’d like to save for my own records. Even with the many pay (and free!) web sites, I still spend a considerable amount of time in front of the microfilm reader at my local FHC to look at the many documents (okay, MOST documents) that aren’t yet available online. Online research gives me a huge advantage as I can find out where my ancestors were, and what additional records I need to find either through research trips or on microfilm.

I guess it all comes down to priorities. For me, time is my most valuable commodity, and Ancestry.com is worth every penny I pay. I can search, find my family, click a button and download the image right onto my hard drive. In exchange for $299 per year (I have the “world” membership, but could downgrade to $149 for a U.S. subscription), I can view records from around the world in the comfort of my own home. Ancestry.com gives me the head start so I know what films to order, where to fly off to for my research trips, and allows me to develop my family history at a much more rapid pace than would otherwise be possible.

Instead of looking at how much I pay for my membership, I’m inclined instead to think about how much I’ve saved…saved in time not wasted, money not spent on incorrect microfilms, and trips not taken to locations where my efforts will prove unfruitful.

Perhaps it all comes down to perspective. You know….is that glass half empty or is it full? Ancestry.com keeps mine pretty darn full these days. What about you? Do you get your money’s worth from your Ancestry.com subscription?

Filed Under: Tech Tuesday, Technology, Web Sites

Tech Tuesday – ToodleDo, Baaaaaby!

November 29, 2011 By Lauren Mahieu Leave a Comment

I’ve gotten used to the snickers of my coworkers, who are amused by my use of technology. Hey, my goal is to be efficient, and technology is the best way to get there. One of the things I learned long ago is whenever possible, only touch a paper once. Then either file it, toss it, distribute it….don’t save it for later. Well, often that’s not possible. Especially in genealogical research, we need to spend time truly analyzing and “digesting” or mentally “processing” a document. I find when I’m in the middle of a research project, I don’t have time to finish all that I want to accomplish. I may have worked on a family line all weekend long, but alas, Monday morning comes and off to work I go. I don’t want to forget where I’m at in the project, so I’ll “ToodleDo” it – that is, add it to my online, cloud-based task management system, so I can pick back up where I left off on the upcoming weekend. Other times I find I get bored working on one family line, and just need a break. However, again, I don’t want to forget about ideas I had for research, or overlook data entry of documents gleaned at repository.

Bradstreet and Bursley Task List

Last Spring I was working furiously on my Bursley family, preparing for our New England trip. Well, I was also researching several other lines while at the same repositories, and consequently, brought back a considerable amount of data that needs to be reviewed, analyzed, and where appropriate, entered in my database. The items above are some of the “to do” items for my Bradstreet and Bursley families.

ToodleDo also allows you to include notes for each item.

Notes for tasks allow additional information to be saved

I like to include notes in my list of tasks – may be links to other sites, information I need to review, or details on where I’ve filed the data requiring attention.

Photographed pages of books still need my review

I used to use the task list in my genealogy software, but it doesn’t provide the same versality that ToodleDo offers:

Sort by surname
Sort by priority
Detailed notes for each task
Online and in the cloud for reference regardless of your location

Like my other favorite application (read about my love affair with Evernote), ToodleDo is FREE!

Filed Under: Tech Tuesday, Technology, Web Sites

Wise Wasgatts

November 24, 2011 By Lauren Mahieu 2 Comments

Hannah (Thomas) Wasgatt's signature is found in her husband Thomas' probate record

Last Friday was a genealogist’s dream – I received five deeds and three probate files in the mail. Of particular interest was the probate record for my 5th Great Grandfather, Thomas Wasgatt, who died 19 May 1820. Shown above is the signature of his wife, Hannah (Thomas) Wasgatt, who acknowledged in writing her “allowance” from her husband’s estate. While most of Hannah’s female peers were giving their “mark” when a signature was necessary, she was able to write her name.

Hannah wasn’t the only smarty pants in the family. Nope, her husband Thomas clearly was a learned man. I was so tickled to find that the very first item listed in the inventory of his possessions was a desk.

Thomas Wasgatt, Jr. owned a desk, the first item listed in his estate's inventory

A business man, Thomas had owned several mills in the Eden (now Bar Harbor) area, most of which he’d sold to his son, Thomas the 3rd. I envision my ancestor sitting at his desk with a quill and ink, balancing his ledgers and other business accounts by candle light. Or maybe this is where he did his reading? His “Library” was also included on the inventory and was valued at $2.25.

Thomas owned books and decanters

The decanters shown above also give another glimpse into Thomas’ life – he must have enjoyed wine and entertaining to have such items among his household possessions.

While this particular probate did not yield any extraordinary genealogical clues, I couldn’t have been more pleased with it. To see that some of the things I value the most – education, learning, reading – were also clearly important to Thomas made me do a happy dance.

Genealogy is so much more than names and dates and places. Those are certainly important, but finding the people that lived, to learn about their lives and their history, is what makes genealogy fun.

Filed Under: My Family Lines, Wasgatt Tagged With: Wasgatt

Wordless Wednesday

November 23, 2011 By Lauren Mahieu Leave a Comment

Simpson Siblings: Ernest L. Simpson, Susan (Simpson) Weidmayer Barlow Locke, and Frank O. Simpson

Filed Under: My Family Lines, Wordless Wednesday

Why I love Evernote – Part II

November 20, 2011 By Lauren Mahieu 4 Comments

A few weeks ago I wrote about my love affair with Evernote, a free application that I use both at work and at home. Evernote and Roots Magic, my primary genealogical software, provide my main source of organizing my genealogical research and documents. I love both.

Evernote even searches text from images!

As much as I love Evernote, yesterday I began to question my organizational system. I’ve started the National Genealogical Society Home Study Course. It’s excellent! Lesson 1 discussed organization and how to manage your research files, and was the impetus for reconsidering my electronic organization. Well, after spending the better part of 24 hours considering this, I’ve decided: EVERNOTE STAYS!

Text AND photo searches
NGS has no firm recommendations, but suggests a system that is followed consistently that allows the researcher to easily identify documents and files. Evernote allows me to do this. See the above screenshot, in which I completed a search of my notes that contain the surname, Wasgatt. Evernote even searched the images, which I’d attached after doing a “Screen Snip” (details are in my last Evernote post) of online e-books which I’d saved in Evernote.

Flag items for later research

Flag items for further research or data entry, and save URLs where the info was found.

Evernote automatically attaches and saves the URL for any downloaded text, so you can easily refer back to the web site from where data was clipped. (More about clipping below.) Even more cool, you can add a check box to any note to flag it for further research. I use this feature often when I’m doing online research. Instead of stopping my research at that moment to process whatever data I’ve found, I can add this check box to be sure I come back later to analyze the information and process it, if appropriate. When complete, simply click the check box and the item will no longer show up when searching items requiring follow-up.

Google Chrome, a perfect Evernote complement

Chrome's Evernote Clipper - Clip an article (selected text), the entire page, or just the URL

I’ve been a long-standing Mozilla Firefox user; however, I’ve converted to Google’s Chrome. I made the switch for a variety of reasons, but a large consideration was the Evernote plug-in for Chrome is far superior (IMHO) over the clip tool for Firefox. When saving database from a web page into Evernote, you have several options – select text and save that as an “article”, clip the entire page, or just clip the URL. Chrome’s plug in for Evernote also allows you to select the Evernote notebook in which you wish to save the data, as well as select any tags you’d like associated with the information.

Let Google search your Evernote files

Another cool feature available to Chrome users is the ability to allow Google to search your Evernote files. (Not to worry, only YOU will be able to search – your files will remain private and unavailable to others.) This is really handy when I’m looking for new information, but may have forgotten what data I’ve already uncovered in previous searches.

Now what?
NGS has given me definite food for thought in how I organize my files. Using Evernote, I can find data through various tags. For example, I can search for all notes pertaining to the Stanwood surname that involve deeds. Alternately, if I’ve located a document which is applicable to two family lines, I can tag it with both surnames. (Bradstreet AND Stanwood, for example…it will then appear in searches for either surname.) This eliminates the need to have a copy of the same document in two separate folders.

What I will be doing differently, is more carefully tagging my notes in Evernote. In addition, I will begin to document in the note where on my hard drive I’ve saved the electronic version of the document. Great suggestions from the home study course! Between Evernote and NGS, I hope to become a much better genealogist. Now, time to go photograph my paper copies of deeds and probate records received by old-fashioned snail mail from various county court houses last week…and link in Evernote and Roots Magic, of course!

Filed Under: Learning, Technology

Technology and Tracing Thomas

November 13, 2011 By Lauren Mahieu 1 Comment

Hannah (Higgins) Higgins, niece of my 4th Great Grandmother, Betsy (Wasgatt) Stanwood. Photo courtesy of Holly Green.

My favorite ancestor is Betsy (Wasgatt) Stanwood. She was one tough lady. She was five months pregnant when she married my 4th great grandfather, Benjamin Stanwood, in 1808. Not exactly politically correct in the early 19th century. When Benjamin died, she managed the family farm, and was listed as head of house on nearly all subsequent censuses. When her grown children and spouses moved to Minnesota, she went along for the ride, but came back to her home – Eden (now Bar Harbor), Maine. She apparently made this trip alone, although she was nearly 80 years old at the time. I love Bar Harbor – I understand why she came home.

I’ve dabbled in my Wasgatt genealogy throughout the years, but was again inspired to pick it back up when I saw the Wasgatt family Bible in Bar Harbor last summer. Armed with this info, and starting from scratch, I’ve been going through generation after generation, adding appropriate sources that I either lacked in my beginning days, or were dropped when moving from one genealogy program to the next.

One really cool thing about retracing your steps after so many years is that there are a lot more resources available online to assist. Not that I’ve ignored offline and primary resources, mind you. I’ve armed myself with copies of the Bar Harbor Town Records, filmed by Picton Press. Thomas F. Vining’s Cemeteries of Cranberry Isles and the Towns of Mount Desert Island. Oh yes, Maine Genealogical Society’s “Vital Records of Mount Desert Island Maine and Nearby Islands: 1776-1820,” and host of other resources.

The difference, however, is that genealogists can now avail themselves of bigger and better tools. If you haven’t found Google eBooks, for example, you are really missing out. (You can filter the book selection to see only those that are free – typically that’s where you’ll find the out of print history books.) This goldmine has given me the history behind the towns where my ancestors lived, and new places to seek for records. It’s a heck of lot easier to find what you’re looking for when you know what that is! (See Ancestry Insider’s post – Tree Decorators and Tree Growers.) After spending the last couple of weeks downloading and reading Google Books’ digitized version of out-of-print histories, exploring Betsy’s grandfather Thomas’ roots in Porsmouth and Rochester, NH, Berwick, Penobscot, Hampden, Trenton and Bar Harbor, ME, I’ve been able to glean a considerable amount of new information from the various county web sites. (See my earlier post on Maine’s digitized deeds.) For the rest, I’ve been able to contact historical societies and the county registries of probate and deeds, and copies of original records should be in my mail box this week.

However, there’s still a wealth of information we can access online that we didn’t have available twenty years ago. (Heck, a lot of it wasn’t even there five years ago!) Take, for example, Find A Grave. We all know about the wonderful death and burial info we can access with this great resource. However, what I’ve found even more beneficial is the ability to connect with cousins through this site. The photo of Hannah (Higgins) Higgins above, posted by the wife of a distant cousin, was one that I discovered at 1:30 a.m. this morning, surfing Find A Grave . (Hey, sleep is overrated!) Next time you visit Find A Grave, take a few extra minutes and email the poster. (Always appropriate before downloading their images, but especially important if they have additional photos and other info on your subject and they might be related.) This evening I’m very thankful for the internet – with it, the world is indeed a much smaller place!

Filed Under: My Family Lines, Technology, Web Sites Tagged With: Stanwood, Wasgatt

Chronicling America – and Stanwoods too!

November 12, 2011 By Lauren Mahieu 4 Comments

Melvin S. Stanwood and the Tri State Telephone Company

This photo has always intrigued me. Knowing my grandmother’s uncle, Melvin Stanwood, made his way from city to city, town to town, bringing telephone lines to local citizens, it seemed highly probable this picture was somehow related to him. Thanks to the Library of Congress and the Chronicling America project, I now know for sure. This evening I downloaded the following article (Princeton Union [Princeton, MN] 12 Oct 1905) from http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov:

Princeton Union - Melvin Stanwood takes charge of Tri City Telephone

Most cool, is after scanning the photo in on my Flip Pal scanner and blowing it up, I now see that the gentleman in the center in the suit is Uncle Melvin himself! How did I miss that before? Moral of the story – keep revisiting web sites, keep searching – you never know what’s gonna turn up!

Filed Under: My Family Lines Tagged With: Stanwood

Tech Tuesday: Cute pictures with Cute PDF

Family Planning and the 19th Century Family Tree

Wordless Wednesday: Salisbury Cove Cemetery, Bar Harbor, Maine

Tech Tuesday: Money and the Great Ancestry.com Debate

Tech Tuesday – ToodleDo, Baaaaaby!

Wise Wasgatts

Wordless Wednesday

Why I love Evernote – Part II

Technology and Tracing Thomas

Chronicling America – and Stanwoods too!

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